Edward Geoffrey Simons Parrinder (April 10, 1910 – June 16, 2005) — known as E.G. Parrinder or Geoffrey Parrinder — was a professor of Comparative Religion at King's College London, a Methodist minister, and the author of over 30 books on world religions. At least one — What World Religions Teach Us (1968) — achieved bestseller status. He was an authority, and pioneering researcher, on West African indigenous religions.

Biography

Parrinder was Professor of the Comparative Study of Religion in the University of London. After ordination (1936) he spent twenty years teaching in West Africa and Studying African religions, before becoming the founder member of the Department of Religious Studies in University College of Ibadan, Nigeria. He traveled widely in Africa, and in India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, Israel, Jordan and Turkey and held lecturing appointments in Australia, India and America and at Oxford. He worked as a missionary in Benin and Côte d'Ivoire for nearly two decades beginning in 1933, and became an authority on indigenous West African religions. From 1958 until his retirement in 1977, he taught at King's College London. Among his students there was the future Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Books